The History Book
Page 8
Sayer locked the door. “I don’t know who you are, but get on your feet and walk out from behind the desk.”
Kat stayed quiet.
Sayer took a key out of his pocket, opened a wall cabinet, and took out a pistol. He opened a drawer for ammunition. Kat heard metal on metal as a round went into the breech.
“Leave everything and just stand up, or I’ll blow your head off.”
She slid up onto her feet. “Uncle Nate, it’s me, Kat. Don’t . . .”
Sayer’s face broke into a lazy smile as if he was dumb not to have expected it. He emptied out the rounds from the pistol, put everything back, and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Kat, Kat, Kat . . .”
She stepped back.
“Come over here,” ordered Sayer.
Kat didn’t move.
“What do you want me to do, call in your mother? Move away from my desk, so I can see what you were doing down there.”
Kat stepped back and edged along the windowsill.
Sayer glanced down at the files, pulled open the cupboard door to see the open safe, peered in toward the inner safe. “How did you get in there?”
Kat shrugged. She wanted to appear defiant, but couldn’t find words.
“You’re a clever little bitch,” he whispered. “Waste of talent, becoming a lawyer, I’ll tell you that.”
“Uncle Nate,” said Kat, trying to sound as if everything was normal. “Why’d you keep stuff like that? You could go to jail.”
She stepped farther away, as Sayer looked through the documents himself, for a second absorbed in his own past and what it meant.
Then his voice stopped her. “I’m going to tell you something you need to know,” he said.
There wasn’t harshness on his face; no kindness, either, or real surprise at what Kat had done. His eyes, though, had almost no color, nothing to judge them by.
“Like with your mom and me, it usually takes two people to do something wrong. The work I do with your dad, I break the law a lot, so I make sure that if I’m ever going down, I take others with me. That’s how it works out there, Kat.”
“Does Dad know?” muttered Kat.
“No.” Sayer crouched down, put the files back into the two safes. “And don’t you go telling him,” he said, closing the door. “If a kid like you can get into this . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, but stared at the desk, chin in his hands.
Genuine curiosity kept Kat in place. “But why not tell him, if it’s that important?”
Sayer actually smiled then. “Your father’s a great man. He has big dreams. He just doesn’t understand the bad things a person has to do to achieve them, and that’s where I come in.”
SEVENTEEN
Monday, 10:20 a.m., BST
As Kat slips the cell phone back into her pocket, she realizes how bleak London has become, rain-washed, splattered with litter, claustrophobic with dark clouds, and no spring in the step of the people.
She’s also being followed.
With most people, when she tests eye contact, she’s met with suspicion. But she’s just eyeballed her tail, and he reacted too quickly, one second at one with his environment, looking tiredly at a shop window, the next, when Kat hijacks his gaze, alert and calculating.
She’s halfway to her destination in an inner suburb called Clapham.
If he’s the primary tail, there could be others ahead, putting her in a box formation, meaning a primary tail, two farther back, two in front, and, if they have the resources, one or two on each flank.
Kat’s used to being invisible, used to observing people without being seen. She doesn’t like it the other way around. Surveillance in London might be different from that in Washington, but that doesn’t mean Kat can’t get around it.
She crosses a park that is more cut up and dirty than the one near the warehouse. Across the next main street, two giant television screens billboarded onto the sides of buildings are causing a crowd to gather under them.
Kat sees a way of giving her tail the slip.
As a kid, Kat remembers screens like this only in Times Square and other big places, but now they’re commonplace. These days, there’s no place you can’t watch TV.
In England, they seem to be bigger and more planned. On most intersections, two screens are rigged side by side above the street, with a single caption running underneath both, explaining what’s showing. The one on the left is dedicated to sports; the one on the right concentrates on politics and other news.
A growing crowd is looking up at the screen showing the wreckage caused by a car bomb that has just gone off in the Middle East. A smaller group’s watching a soccer match on the other screen.
The crowd spills onto the road, causing traffic to jam.
Kat pushes her way through, jostling, moving quickly. Once she’s ten deep in the crush, she turns to check. The primary tail is still behind her.
The sports screen shows the Brazilian soccer team’s captain, Javier Laja, his jaw jutting out over a stack of microphones.
Next door is the U.S. president, James Abbott, a man her dad used to call a crook.
“Yeah, what’s that prick Abbott got to say?” says a loud voice so close to Kat’s ear that she jumps. It belongs to a heavyset black man, hands on hips, staring upward.
“What you get so worked up for?” retorts another black guy with him.
“How come he has so much power over here, yet we can’t vote him in or out?”
“What’s it matter? They do the job for themselves, not for no one else.”
Squeezing through, Kat mistakenly knocks the elbow of a middle-aged man in white overalls, carrying a Starbucks cup. Coffee spills on his wrist.
“Sorry,” she says.
He glances at it, ignores her, and keeps talking to a younger man beside him. “Things ain’t as simple as they’re making out.”
“Yeah. Why not?” replies the younger man. “Your type makes everything complicated when it’s not, which means you never have an answer to nothing. This Project Peace could be the answer, but you trash it and don’t have the brains to think of anything else.”
The older man keeps his eyes to himself. “If that’s the world you want.”
“What world’s that?”
The older man brings out his driver’s license, holds it tight between two fingers. “There’s everything they need to know about you on this,” he says angrily. “Soon, they’ll issue them transmitting signals, so they can read it while it’s in your pocket, who you spoke to, who you shagged, who you called on the phone. And supposing you do something wrong, anything, when they want, anytime they want, they’ll get you for it. And if you don’t carry it, then what do they do? Arrest you.”
Everyone’s talking, arguing. Whatever’s been announced, there’s not much happiness about it.
“Saturday’s a bit much,” she hears from somewhere, but by the time Kat starts looking for the face, a surge pushes her forward.
“If they can do it by Saturday,” says a woman. “I know the football’s important, but this is more important, don’t you think?”
Kat ends up catching her eye. “Of course,” she says, trying to do an English accent.
“We’re all so sick of war, war, war,” continues the woman.
On the screen, a television host in a white pantsuit appears against a backdrop of crowds waving British flags. Her voice is inaudible, but Kat reads from subtitles. “Give us your view. Do you support Project Peace? Text message us YES or NO on your mobile phone or on your interactive TV at home.”
A teenager jabs his cell phone keys to vote NO, but an older hand stops him. “Press that, son, and they’ll have you marked for life.”
With the next announcement, Kat sees what the commotion is about. The signing of the Coalition for Peace and Security and the soccer final are now to be held on the same day—Saturday, September 2.. A problem with President Abbott’s schedule has forced the ceremony to be held
then. Rain is forecast for Sunday, so the soccer final’s been moved forward a day.
“In our time, you’d play football in the rain,” says a man behind Kat.
“What about the roof over Wembley?” says another man next to him. “I thought they’d spent millions just for that purpose.”
A woman behind Kat begins loudly. “The whole world will be watching the final.”
“Not too loud,” mumbles a man with her.
“But it’s deliberate,” she continues, her voice lower. “Billions of people glued to a football match, while Abbott, Rand, and their cronies stitch things up.”
“Grace, let’s go,” insists the man. “Nothing we can do about it,” he says.
“But don’t you see what they’re doing?”
“Yes.” He’s tugging her back through the crowd, his voice fading. “There’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
Javier Laja, a huge smile, right hand raised, points his fingers forward in a V, the victory sign.
Kat remembers Laja making the same gesture when he was a kid. The orphanage was a row of clapboard houses at the edge of the Lancaster Fairground, and Kat loved the bright colors, pictures on all the walls, the sound of kids running everywhere, and the grown-ups laughing and letting them do it.
With no siblings her own age, Kat grew up almost as an only child. She spent a lot of time by herself in the huge family house on Georgetown’s R Street.
Laja’s father, an illegal immigrant working at a meatpacking plant, was killed in a trade union fight with the police. The next day, the police came for his mother and shot her as she tried to run. Kat’s mom heard about it, and both her parents brought along Kat to collect Javier from police protection.
Next to the sports screen, British Prime Minister Michael Rand stands in front of a display outlining the benefits of Project Peace. It scrolls down slogans—GREATER COOPERATION, DEMOCRACY FOR ALL, SHARED ENERGY, ALLIES TOGETHER.
Behind Kat, kids in the backseat of a car wipe the window with a cloth to see what’s going on. The traffic’s not moving, cars clogged up like river logs. People are getting wet, but there’s no moving them.
“You only have to see how run-down everything is getting,” a gray-haired woman is saying. “Look at the legislative process in Parliament, every law being postponed because of debates on the war. You can’t run a country when laws aren’t being passed.”
The politics screen switches to a broadcast from the Kremlin. The sports screen shows how the quarterfinals and semifinals are being rearranged to meet the new date of the final.
The crowd has provided cover. She can’t see the primary tail. But that doesn’t mean he’s not still there.
“They’re not going to get away with this.” A voice that’s hardly a whisper, a young black woman Kat’s age, thin like she hardly eats, angry eyes, hands on hips, and not caring whose space she’s taking.
The dark eyes rest on Kat for a moment, with the beginning of a smile, which becomes serious when she sees Kat doesn’t want to talk.
“Call it a democracy,” she mutters. “They have no idea what the word means.”
Kat starts moving, but the black woman catches her elbow. Quickly, Kat pulls away. Now’s the right time.
She pushes through the crowd to a pub on the corner. Inside, the heat and noise hit her. She heads to the restrooms at the other end of the bar.
EIGHTEEN
Monday, 11:46 a.m., BST
When Kat comes out, she’s taller, wearing sneakers with heels, a light gray, long-sleeved, hooded T-shirt, black cotton pants, and a wig of brown hair falling long below her shoulders.
She skirts the crowds and keeps going south, hood up against the rain. The areas get even poorer—strollers, kids slung on backs, mothers shouting, cars with windows taped up, guys hanging around storefronts—a cab company, betting shop, pub—with nothing to do but watch and resent.
White, black, Asian—when hope goes, it doesn’t matter what color you are. Dix Street was like this. Rainwater not getting drained away. No one fixing the broken pavement. Broken neon signs staying broken.
Greendale Road curves off slightly from the main road, with row houses on both sides. As Kat makes the turn, she sees no sign of being followed. Three kids swing around a lamppost at the bottom. Two black women in cropped tank tops and jeans walk past her, brushing her like she’s not there.
The street’s heavy with cars parked bumper to bumper, leaving just a single lane for driving. A red compact car is coming toward Kat, with an SUV approaching from the other way. They slow to a snail’s pace, getting past each other by knocking side-view mirrors. She counts out ahead to number 49, walks straight up to it, and rings the doorbell.
She stands in a small front yard, its path overgrown with weeds, separated from the house next door by a knee-high brick wall. A television flickers at her through lace curtains.
Sharp and decisively, the door opens, and Kat’s face to face with the guy who helped Liz into the van. He’s powerful, thirtyish, huge shoulders, hair closely cropped, high forehead, red plaid shirt hanging from his jeans. He toes the doorstep with brown leather boots, laces hanging untied. He’s like a horse, impatient in its stable. Before looking at Kat, his eyes dart around the street, taking their time.
His eyes settle on her, deep blue, which could have made him attractive but for the flatness in them. He doesn’t speak; nor does Kat. She looks up at the sky, still oppressed with rain clouds. She hooks damp hair from the wig behind her ears. Drops of water fall onto her shoulders.
Still he doesn’t speak. Nor does he move his eyes off her. He’s inspecting her to see what threat she carries. He puts his hand up on the doorjamb, leaning on it. She finds she’s biting her lower lip. He’s standing there, making her socially nervous, which is exactly what Kat isn’t expecting.
“I’m looking for Liz,” she says.
He keeps studying her face; feet, hands, eyes, everything stays just the same as if she’d never spoken. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Nothing happens. He’s the most arrogantly confident man she’s ever met.
“Liz Luxton,” says Kat. She swallows, can’t help herself, knows he sees it, then picks herself up and hardens her voice. “Tracy Elizabeth Luxton. Age twenty-seven. Birthday August twentieth, nine days back, went to Hydeburn Comprehensive School, just around the corner from here. Is this her address?”
He shakes his head. “Not here.” His voice is dull, like his eyes.
Kat shifts her head toward the window, but keeps her hands clasped in front of her. “Is this the Luxton family home?”
“No.”
“How come?” Kat shifts her body weight forward and puts her hands on her hips. “This is the address she gave me last night.”
He comes out the door, takes her shoulder, making his grip hurt, and walks her backward three steps.
“Hey,” she says, reaching across to get rid of his hand. He takes it away before she gets there, turns his back to her, and is halfway back inside the doorway when she says loudly, “Are you the guy who blew my sister’s brains out?”
For a moment, from the way the veins in his neck tighten, she thinks he’s going to react. But she’s wrong. Without looking back, he goes inside and shuts the door. He’s in the television room, at the window fiddling with the curtain sash.
“Pity,” she shouts. “I thought maybe we could be friends.”
He meets her eyes with a look as flat as before. He closes the curtains.
Kat’s certain now. He’s the guy who helped Liz into the van. He knows who Kat is, knows about Suzy, why she died, maybe how she died, and why she called herself Charlotte.
Kat steps into the street, looks left and right. She pulls off the wig so he can see her, feels the cool air around her head.
The door of the house opens and he comes out, his shirt tucked in, his bootlaces tied, his eyes narrowed toward her, a cigarette half-smoked between his fingers.
He goes straight past her. “W
alk with me,” he says. She runs to catch up, the bag bumping up and down on her back. He stops for her at the intersection and says, “Whoever you’re looking for isn’t here.”
“You were with her. Last night. I saw you.”
“If you get picked up here, you’ll be deported,” he says. “If you cross a zone from here in a cab, he’ll report it.” He gives her a card with a magnetic strip on the back.
“It’s a tube ticket. Walk straight up.” He points back the way she came. “Not the first tube station, but the second, Clapham South. The iris scanner is broken. This ticket will see you in. Take the Northern Line northbound to Waterloo. When you get there, don’t use the elevator. Take the stairs, where tickets are checked manually. The staff are on strike, so you’ll walk straight out. Don’t head for the street, but for the Eurostar train. If you’ve got enough cash on you, buy a ticket to Paris or Brussels. Then head back. You’ll be inside the Zone One central cordon. If they’re looking for you but haven’t got your visual signature, it’ll take them at least twenty-four hours to go through the material. No cabs, keep your head down, and you’ll be okay.”
Kat’s listening, taking it in, waiting for him to finish. “What about my sister?”
“I’m telling you how to get back.” He’s looking somewhere across the road, where two screens hang and a dozen black guys are leaning against cars outside a private car service office. “You’ve got balls, so I’m helping. That’s all.”
“Then help me some more. I want to go to where Suzy, or Charlotte, was killed. Do you know that place? Can you take me there?”
He draws on the cigarette, drops it, and kicks the butt into a puddle.
“If you come here again, I won’t be so nice,” he says.
“All I want to know—”
“You angry because the world isn’t fair?” he says derisively. “Big club to join.” He glances down at the hissing butt being washed down a drain, turns, and walks away.
NINETEEN
Monday, 3:43 p.m., BST
Kat does exactly as he’s instructed. At Clapham South, technicians are up a ladder, working on a scanner. A notice at Waterloo Station says ticket staff are on a 24-hour work stoppage.